Filippo FIMIANI | Contemporary Aesthetics Program 2024-2025

Generalities: FILIPPO FIMIANI

Academic Year: 2024/2025

Study Class: Three-year Degree Communication Sciences

Teaching Activity: CONTEMPORARY AESTETICS (9 CFU = 60 HOURS)

EDUCATIONAL GOALS

The course aims at providing indispensable elements and methodological tools for learning and understanding of the main themes, approaches and concepts of contemporary aesthetic studies, with particular regard to the iconic production and languages of new digital media and communication, ordinary, sectorial and integrated.

Students will be able to understand the transformation of the contemporary icon-sphere and user-generated content (and not) in relation to the spread of participatory digital cultures and new technological tools and devices (especially mobile), and to analyze exemplary case studies to identify and critically apply the appropriate methodological tools of deep and contextual understanding and reconstruction.

students will be able to elaborate and produce digital forms and contents related to contemporary aesthetics, communication and consumption of iconic products, especially connected, as well as to develop an interpretative and productive learning-by-making working method that is both critical and creative, necessary to present individual and/or group media products and the results of specific analyses and autonomous proposals related to areas, aspects and case-studies.

students will be able to apply their knowledge and skills in other disciplinary, learning and professional contexts related to contemporary aesthetics and iconic digital productions and ict.

the final examination consists of an oral test that will duly consider, in quantitative and qualitative terms, the inter-course, individual and group tests that will be carried out by the attending students with the support of the Audiovisual storytelling laboratory-LABSAV, in collaboration with the Festival Kinea d'ombra, and that will consist of the realization of an audiovisual product.

PRE-REQUIREMENTS

Would be desirable notions of semiotics, aesthetics, modern and contemporary art history, history of cinema and media.

TEACHING METHODS

Theoretical lectures and practical exercises.

Verifying Methods

Constant intercourse, group and individual verifications, and the production of an audiovisual product. Examination with final grades.

CLASS CONTENTS

Aesthetics is first and foremost about «aisthesis», i.e. the senses and sensibility, and bodily experiences. In the contemporary media landscape, experiences are realized by interacting with new technologies, which are now pervasive and naturalized, portable and embedded. The course will examine these obvious and innovative practices, with particular attention paid to the uses and consumption of complex and syncretic visual and digital phenomena or digital and social contents. These are produced and participated in through today's ubiquitous and pervasive media and communication tools, as mobile devices. The course will investigate such ways of feeling, making and being that are habitual or thematized, as well as their impact on our behaviors, tastes, and consumption, and thus on the construction of our social and existential identity.

Thanks to the many textual, visual and digital materials, which will be presented and discussed, but thanks also by the practical and creative checks with the students during an ad hoc workshop, the course aims to provide the elements and tools useful for understanding the contemporary aesthetic debate.

REFERENCES TEXTS FOR 6 CFU

Students who attend classes (workshop required)

• Barbara Grespi, Luca Malavasi, Dalla parte delle immagini, McGraw Hill 2022
• Filippo Fimiani, Anna Chiara Sabatino, Film di tutti i giorni. Estetiche e stilistiche della portabilità audiovisiva, in Federica Cavaletti, Filippo Fimiani, Barbara Grespi, Anna Chiara Sabatino (eds), Immersioni quotidiane. Vita ordinaria, cultura visuale e nuovi media, pp.233-244

Students who do not attend classes and then do not participate in the workshop

In addition to the texts listed above, the following essays in Ruggero Eugeni (edited by), Il primo libro dei media, Einaudi 2024:

• Arte e media; Narrazione, racconto e storytelling (Elisabetta Modena); Digitale, digitalizzazione, algoritimi; Rete e reti (Elisabetta Locatelli); Immagine, immaginazione, immaginario (Alice Cati), Tecnologia (Anna Catarina Dalmasso)

REFERENCE TEXTS FOR 9 CFU

Students who attend classes (workshop required)

• Barbara Grespi, Luca Malavasi, Dalla parte delle immagini, McGraw Hill 2022
• Filippo Fimiani, Anna Chiara Sabatino, Film di tutti i giorni. Estetiche e stilistiche della portabilità audiovisiva, in Federica Cavaletti, Filippo Fimiani, Barbara Grespi, Anna Chiara Sabatino (a cura di), Immersioni quotidiane. Vita ordinaria, cultura visuale e nuovi media, pp.233-244
• Federica Cavaletti, Filippo Fimiani, Barbara Grespi, Anna Chiara Sabatino (a cura di), Immersioni quotidiane. Vita ordinaria, cultura visuale e nuovi media, Meltemi 2023, cap.4

Students who do not attend classes, or ERASMUS, and then do not participate in the workshop

In addition to textes listed above

- Ruggero Eugeni (a cura di), Il primo libro dei media, Einaudi 2024

- Federica Cavaletti, Filippo Fimiani, Barbara Grespi, Anna Chiara Sabatino (a cura di), Immersioni quotidiane. Vita ordinaria, cultura visuale e nuovi media, Meltemi 2023, cap.2